Fulham’s plight demonstrates it’s impossible to apply the rules of business to football

On paper, by now, Fulham should be sitting comfortably in the middle of football’s Premier League table.

Instead, having spent more than £100m on 12 new players in the close season, after securing promotion, they find themselves relegated. And not just sent down fighting a hard, glorious battle to the end. Their demotion has been painful and humiliating to witness.

Last week, they were consigned to the Championship with five weeks still to go, having conceded an astonishing 76 goals, 17 more than fellow strugglers Burnley, Cardiff and the also-doomed Huddersfield. In 2019, Fulham have allowed in at least two goals every match.

They’ve been through two managers, and the third, Scott Parker, is yet to secure a draw, let alone a win.

What Fulham’s plight illustrates is that it’s impossible to apply the rules of business to football. Normally, in the capitalist world, whatever you invest yields a return. How you invest, and the amount, are usually determined by analysis.

Not so with Fulham. They did the poring over the data alright, and bought a dozen footballers to bolster their squad, and the result was catastrophe: a team that did not play as a team. The defence was chaotic and porous, the midfield supine, the attack too blunt.

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The club’s owner and chairman, Shahid Khan, is a brilliant entrepreneur, having made a considerable fortune in the US from the development and sale of car parts. But this multi-billionaire has had to apologise to the fans: “I am sorry that we let you down. Our goal this season was to build on what we achieved in promotion and deliver on our pledge to invest heavily in the squad, ensuring that Fulham would always compete in the Premier League and, no matter the result, never disappoint.

“That didn’t occur and, for that, we hold ourselves accountable. We will reflect, plan thoroughly and respond accordingly.”

Even there, Khan’s words do not augur well, hinting at a detailed management review, still couched in business PR-speak.

As someone who watched Fulham labour week after week, and paid for three season tickets (and had to console the possessor of one of them, a 14 year-old son who saw his dream for his favourite club dashed), it was obvious where the problems lay. Apparent, too, to the thousands of fans who sat around me, and often ended games with their heads in their hands, despairing at what they’d just witnessed.

In baseball in the US, the Oakland A’s famously devised a system under which they secure marginal gains until in the end, they were champions. They bought players based on specialist skills, building a jigsaw of a team. Each match they looked for incremental improvements, and gradually, they rose up the rankings. This “Moneyball” method, vividly detailed in the book of the same name by Michael Lewis, and then a film, was similar to the approach followed at Fulham and overseen by Khan’s son, Tony.

But baseball is not football. It may work in a sport which is more about individual performances and setting up rosters correctly rather than play flowing seamlessly and quickly from one player to another, and players knowing, or second-guessing, what their teammates are doing.

Football at the top level is about chemistry and cohesiveness, and determination. Actual skill is a given – any professional footballer worth their salt should possess a sufficient level of expertise. By the time they reach the higher tiers there is little to choose between them. It’s the not-so-evident side that distinguishes them: the mental, the intangible, the courage, the daring, and how they operate with one another.

In their last home fixture, Fulham played Manchester City. Time and again, the Londoners gave away possession – by not completing a pass, by kicking the ball into a space where there was no teammate present, by actually sending it direct to the opposition. City quickly realised they did not have to do very much – if they lost the ball it would soon come back to them. The contrast between the woeful Fulham and the superb City, a team who know exactly how to find each other, and as a result, are one of the finest sides seen anywhere, could not have been more marked.

The City stars never stopped running; their opponents, bereft of confidence and certainty, did not chase and harry, did not sprint on to passes, did not throw themselves into tackles.

How to waste £100m-plus: by going out and splashing it all at once on footballers who look good according to the computer, in the belief they will gel as a unit, and expecting them to bond with existing players who have been playing together for a while and went through trials galore to secure elevation to the top flight. Repaying the latter for their endeavours with the addition of a raft of new colleagues who must displace them in order to justify the outlay is not the smartest managerial tactic. Feelings are bruised, egos are wounded, and the results do not lie.

Producing winning football is all about the successful management of people. It’s probably the best example there is of how to use the unseen to determine the seen. What it cannot be reliant upon is the appliance of science.

A team has proved that – it’s just a shame that side had to be Fulham.

Chris Blackhurst is a former editor of The Independent, and director of C|T|F Partners, the campaigns, strategic, crisis and reputational, communications advisory firm